About Ten years ago an interpretation of the Apocalypse by Brother David Pitt-Francis was published under the title Meditations on the Last Message of Jesus. I read a copy, recognised it as containing ideas which were not in accordance with fundamental Christadelphian teaching, but, understanding that it was given only limited circulation, did not consider it was worth publicly commenting on it. The same interpretation has now resurfaced under the title The Most Amazing Message Ever Written, published by an outside publisher.
I obtained a copy, checked to confirm that it was essentially the same work, with some amendments and revisions, and put it to one side, with no intention of doing any more about it. The decision to reread it and review it was prompted by two things. Firstly, I received a phone call from a brother overseas who had read the book, was shocked by its contents, and wanted to know if The Testimony was intending to review it. He informed me that the book was certainly circulating in some areas overseas. Secondly, I discovered that ecclesias generally had apparently been circulated regarding the book; in other words, the author seemed to have wished to promulgate his view rather more widely than I had thought. In view of these things it therefore seemed desirable to review it.
This rather long preamble may be thought unnecessary, but it is written to show that editors of The Testimony do not go out of their way to look for things to criticise. Criticism is made reluctantly, not with any pleasure; but when the Truth is under threat the duty exists to reveal openly what is being said or done against the Truth.
General characteristics
It is difficult to summarise The Most Amazing Message Ever Written. In character it is a historical interpretation of the Apocalypse, that is, the main part of the book is seen as covering the centuries between the preaching of the apostles and the return of Christ. However, it is quite unlike the usual historical interpretations, which relate the Apocalyptic symbology to nations and events.
To describe how the author does interpret the symbology is difficult. It is perhaps best done by means of an example: the six trumpets of chapters 8 and 9. To use the author’s own words:
“The trumpet sequences show that when the coverage of the Gospel is partial, there can only be partial judgement. The Church is effectively compared with the Old Israel, who by failing to conquer the land completely and by tolerating idolatry, brought judgements on itself. In this case, partial success of Christian testimony can produce a spiritual (or better, an unspiritual) invasion. The Church is invaded by the forces of superstition, and by a resurgence of paganism in a more knowledgeable and powerful form” (pp. 425-6).
In contrast to this very general view, the commonly accepted historical viewpoint is that the trumpet visions refer to judgements by specific nations on the Christianised Roman Empire, West and then East. Other sections of the book are given an equally general interpretation. We shall refer to this method of interpretation again at the end.
Use of Scripture
Brother Pitt-Francis does not neglect other Scripture in his interpretation. Indeed, the Scriptures are extensively quoted, and many interesting connections are brought out. Whether they should be applied in the way that they are applied is another matter. One disturbing thing about the book, however, is that the author apparently does not believe in the full inspiration of Scripture. He puts forward some propositions at the beginning, one of which is that
“Interpretations of the Old Testament [in the New—TB] may be endorsed by usage, and thus quoted without respect to their original meanings” (p. 21).
By way of example he refers to the application of the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 to the virgin birth of Jesus in Matthew 1, and says that Matthew quotes it “irrespective of whether the prophecy was intended to mean it or not” (p. 22). If the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture has any meaning at all, the original prophecy must have been meant to apply to Jesus. It can only be concluded therefore that Brother Pitt-Francis does not follow the Christadelphian belief of a fully-inspired Bible. This is borne out later on in the book, where he says: “Apostate Judaism thought Satan to be some prosecuting counsel resident in heaven, and this mode of thinking was the background of the poetic book of Job and the vision of Micaiah” (pp. 206-7). If Job 1 and 2 reflects the thinking of apostate Judaism then it is not truly the Word of God.
Further to this aspect, Brother Pitt-Francis makes a lot of references to Jewish apocalyptic writings such as the book of Enoch, and also the Apocrypha, and says that the book of Revelation was a response to them. He stresses how infinitely superior the Apocalypse was to these works; but nevertheless his way of referring to them leaves much to be desired. In dealing with the spiritual temple of Revelation 21 he makes a connection with Ezekiel 48, but then says: “There is also a hint in the vision of other sources, such as Enoch’s description of the twelve gates of heaven” (p. 412). On page 417 the apocryphal book of Tobit is quoted, along with the book of Isaiah. In both these examples Scripture and non-Scripture are referred to as though they were of equal status.
There are not many such references in the book, and it may be thought that we are searching hard for something to criticise when we select them for mention. However, it is in fact very significant in assessing the book as a whole that we draw out these things. If a brother does not accept the full inspiration of Scripture in the way that Christadelphians do, then he is not competent to interpret Scripture, however great his learning; and Brother Pitt-Francis certainly demonstrates that he is well read in all the various books on the Apocalypse.
Preaching to all nations
Brother Pitt-Francis makes a great deal, in his exposition, of Matthew 24:14:
“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come”.
This is seen as a prophecy which has not been fulfilled yet, but which must be fulfilled before Christ returns and the Kingdom is set up. ‘The Church’ (the term used by Brother Pitt-
Francis throughout) could and should have done this long ago but has hitherto failed. This verse is referred to time and again during the course of his exposition.
Christadelphians have generally been content with two explanations of this verse. Those who believe that “the end” refers to the end of the Jewish system in A.D. 70 apply the preaching to the work of the apostles throughout the Roman world, as spoken of in such passages as Romans 16:26 and Colossians 1:23. Those who believe that “the end” is the end of Gentile kingdoms and the establishing of God’s Kingdom believe it applies to the fact that the gospel as recorded in the Scriptures has gone forth to all nations in recent centuries, with the translation of the Bible into all languages.
Brother Pitt-Francis clearly believes that the time will come when literally everyone living on earth will have the gospel preached to them. However, he goes beyond this and introduces the idea of a resurrection of those who have not heard the gospel:
“Christ died for all men and we have no knowledge how God plans to save those to whom the Gospel has never been preached” (p. 216).
Referring to the Millennium he says:
“who knows whether those to be evangelized during this third period will not include many who have never previously had the chance of hearing the Gospel of Christ, or of responding to it?” (p. 390).
The clearest reference to this is as follows:
“Though the Scriptures do not, of course, teach that there is a second chance for those who have rejected Christ, it is equally clear that Christ died for the whole of mankind. Thus, the Millennium could well provide opportunity for the countless people who have never had a previous chance” (p. 399).
Appealing though this idea is, it has no support in Scripture, which is clear that there are those who will never rise ( Is a. 26:14), but who perish like the beasts (Ps. 49:20).
Arising out of Brother Pitt-Francis’s belief that ‘the Church’ neglected its task of evangelising the world is a belief that, contrary to standard Christadelphian teaching, the Holy Spirit gifts did not cease but fell into disuse through lack of faith. He says:
“The miraculous powers of the Holy Spirit were never ‘withdrawn’ from the Church, but they were, in a large measure abandoned by the Church” (p. 109).
Later on in the book the grace of God bestowed upon believers is equated with the giving of the Spirit of God, a common error of evangelical Christendom. Subsequently too, the question of the Spirit gifts is returned to, and the author makes it clear that he believes that the Kingdom cannot come until ‘Christians’ stop trying to do God’s work in their own strength and take up the powers of the Spirit that are freely available instead (p. 232).
Attitude towards Christendom
It is disturbing enough to find a book containing the doctrinal errors already referred to; but even more disturbing is Brother Pitt-Francis’s attitude to ‘the Church’, which he seems to equate with Christendom. There appears to be nothing in the book which gives positive support to the Christadelphian position of being separate from all other sects and denominations on the grounds of differences over fundamental matters of doctrine. Instead, all Christendom seems to be grouped together as the Church’, and those who are saved come from many different sects and denominations:
“the ultimate elect will be a multitude that no man can number, and. . . the constituents of that multitude may be drawn from many bodies of people, who in history were in a state of non-communication with each other” (p. 106).
“The book of Revelation knows no ‘human’ distinction between the true Church and the false. All Christian churches have, to an extent, betrayed their trust through their history in some way or other, but membership or non-membership of any one of them does not, of itself, guarantee or debar an individual from membership of that ultimate ‘innumerable company’ whose constituents are known to God alone. They alone are the ‘true Church’ (p. 172).
Brother Pitt-Francis does refer to “separatist communities. . . who aspire to keep Bible truth pure”, and obviously he must believe that Christadelphians are one such community, although the name Christadelphian’ does not occur in the book. The question arises, What does Brother Pitt-Francis think separates the ‘true Christians’ from false ones? This question is not answered in the book, however, and so we are left unaware of what Brother Pitt-Francis thinks it is necessary for a person to believe before being accepted by God.
Brother Pitt-Francis describes Revelation as being “a spiritual history of the Church” (p. 291), and chapter 14 as being “a series of caricatures of the ‘wilderness journey’ of the Church through the ‘dark ages’ to the rise of the false prophet” (p. 293). This leads to some quite remarkable statements about aspects of the Roman Catholic Church.
Thus he speaks quite tolerantly of the development of monasticism, saying that it was “a mountain of aspiration towards purity. It was a finger of pure aspiration, that pointed towards heaven!”, although “Some of these (monastic) communities taught wrong doctrines” (p. 303). ( Some, not all, let it be noted!) He then refers to evangelising activities at the time of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and in mentioning the latter shows that the Roman Catholic Church is included in what he has to say. He says that “The evangelists were themselves human and taught errors. But it is incorrect to judge such missions by enumerating the doctrinal errors with which they were associated” (p. 304). Amongst these “evangelists” were the Jesuits, as the subsequent page makes clear.
No signs of the times
A consequence of Brother Pitt-Francis’s obsession (for that is what it amounts to, being referred to several times in every chapter) with the idea that Matthew 24:14 must be fulfilled before Christ’s return, in a revived Spirit-directed worldwide preaching mission, is that he dismisses the traditional Christadelphian idea of ‘signs of the times’ which indicate we are living in the era of Christ’s return. Indeed, on pages 65 and 66 he advances the view that “looking for natural and supernatural phenomena as indicators of the end” leads to the halting of the real work of preaching. He thus ignores the fact that the return of Israel is the greatest possible witness to the veracity of the gospel which we preach. He says that we are wrong to look at Israel’s regathering as the fulfilment of Ezekiel 37, and wrong to be looking for a conflict to break out in fulfilment of Ezekiel 38; instead we should be looking for the building of a spiritual temple, apparently in supposed fulfilment of Ezekiel 40-48.
At the end of the book, in a chapter headed “Reflections”, he says that the Apocalypse “serves for all time as an answer to a method of thinking that degrades (the) Day of the Lord to a physical combat and imagines that its nearness can be measured simply by reference to the frequency of signs of the times” (p. 424). The same strictures are applied to any attempt to identify the symbols of the Apocalypse with particular powers.
To do this is to ignore “the Book’s own warning not to add or subtract from its message”, a message which is “nullified by those who applied to it the same canons of interpretation as were applied to the Old Testament prophecy, particularly Daniel” (pp. 428-9). At the beginning of the book attempts to identify the symbols with political powers are stated to be devaluing the book to the level of Nostradamus, a sixteenth-century French astrologer who left behind him a number of quatrains of verse which are alleged today by some to be cryptic prophecies of events up to and beyond our own time.
Fundamental element missing
One is struck, having read The Most Amazing Message Ever Written, by a fundamental defect in the interpretation itself, quite apart from the errors dealt with above. In essence the Apocalypse is interpreted as being a sequence of various prophecies about the faults of the Church, in one form or another. Thus the first four seals of Revelation 6 are stated to depict a kind of cycle of decay and death that came over the early church, and which has come over successive revivals of ‘the Church’; the sealing of the 144,000 represents erroneous man-made attempts to limit the number of the saved by exclusiveness. Other parts of the Apocalypse are also interpreted in this kind of way; we referred above to the interpretation of the trumpets.
This overlooks one fundamental feature of the Apocalypse. Before the process begins of revealing “things which must be hereafter” (4:1) in the seals of chapter 6, and the various visions of the subsequent chapters, there is the introductory vision of chapters 4 and 5, in which Jesus Christ, as the slain Lamb who is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah, is acknowledged as worthy to open the book, which evidently represents the future to be unfolded. He it is who directs the living creatures who control the first four seals, as is fitting for the one “who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him” (1 Pet. 3:22).
In many of the subsequent visions of the book it is those angels who continue to direct affairs, and there can be no doubt that the Lamb continues to be involved in controlling these angels, although he is not normally specifically referred to. Whatever is represented by the seals, the trumpets and the vials, God is undoubtedly directing the fulfilment through His Son and the angels. They cannot therefore refer to the faults, or the human weaknesses, of ‘the Church’, for God would certainly not be working to develop these. This point alone nullifies the whole approach of Brother Pitt-Francis, and reduces his book to an ingenious attempt to force it into the mould of his own preconceived ideas.
Conclusion
Brother Pitt-Francis has clearly read very widely in the writings upon the Apocalypse, perhaps too widely judging by the results. One must credit him with bringing to bear upon the book a lot of Scriptural passages, and some of these are well worth considering in relation to the interpretation of the book, for they need not be applied as Brother Pitt-Francis applies them. For this reason it is possible that the reader of his book with a fairly mature understanding of the Apocalypse could gain some benefit from it.
Beyond that, however, we cannot in all honesty say anything good about the book It is weak over the question of inspiration, sadly astray from sound doctrine over the Holy Spirit, and is completely contrary to that separation from the churches of Christendom that is fundamental to our existence as a community. It diverts our attention from the signs of the times, including the return of Israel, opposes our established basis for interpreting prophecy, and ignores the clear evidence of the Apocalypse itself that God has been working out His purpose with the nations over the last 2,000 years.
Acceptance of its teaching would lead us to expect a literal worldwide preaching of the gospel before Christ comes, something which the Scriptures do not in fact teach, and would lead us back into the spiritual darkness of Christendom. It can only be a matter of the utmost regret that such a book could ever have emanated from one professing to be a C hristadelphian.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)